Shut up and Dance (with Steve) V3

We're getting a little better at this whole 'brewing' thing - it's starting to become awesome fun now that one year down the line we've managed to nail our efficiency problems (not long enough in the mash) and a tipping point came 6 months ago when we both exclaimed, drinking one of our homebrews, that we'd actually prefer it to things we could get in the craft beer shop.

It's biased, i know, but i think we're doing well.

At any rate, we're venturing into brewing another recipe which is a revision of a revision - what was a Simcoe/Cascade IIPA is now a Cascade/Columbus IIPA. I'd welcome any notes on the recipe below as it is in the planning stages for a 2nd December brewdate:

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Brew Method: All Grain
Boil Time: 65 min
Batch Size: 17 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 19 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.076
Efficiency: 62% (brew house)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.085
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV (standard): 9.3%
IBU (tinseth): 99.12

FERMENTABLES:
5 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (74.1%)
250 g - German - Carapils (3.7%)
750 g - Flaked Oats (11.1%)
750 g - Corn Sugar - Dextrose (11.1%)

HOPS:
40 g - Chinook, Type: Pellet, AA: 13, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 61.44
50 g - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.3, Use: Boil for 30 min, IBU: 37.68
50 g - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 8.3, Use: Aroma for 0 min
50 g - Columbus, Type: Pellet, AA: 15, Use: Dry Hop for 5 days
15 g - Columbus, Type: Pellet, AA: 15, Use: Dry Hop for 0 days

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 65 C, Time: 120 min, Amount: 27 L
Starting Mash Thickness: 3 L/kg

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
1 each - Whirlfloc, Time: 15 min

YEAST:
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05 / wyeast 1272 depending on outcome of previous brew experiment.

Are you looking for a lot of bitterness? Been reading a lot about hopbursting recently, which uses no bittering addition, but ****-loads of hops to get the desitred IBU from about 20 mins. More expensive, as you need more hops per IBU, but a smoother bitterness and juicier flavour profile.

120min mash, ? i thought it didnt make much difference mashing for longer.how does it affect your brew?

2 hours wont do any harm but it doesn't seem necessary to me. I sometimes do 90 mins but thats because I full volume BIAB without a sparge.. a stir at 60 can help.

That said as the OP said he had awful issues with efficiency when starting out and seems to only brew big beers so I guess if its worked for them to do that..

@yeastinfection and @covrich - Covrich covers it, the 120min mash yields between 60-65% efficiency for us with a full volume mash w/out sparge. It means, essentially, i can heat the strike, fill the mash tun and walk away for a few hours without having to constantly check the process.

Only downside (allegedly) is that the beer comes out dry. That said I've personally never had a dry beer :lol:

Guys... we bottled our Nelson Sauv SMaSH the other night, tested out the two different yeast strains. Both were tasty, is it frowned upon to use two yeasts in one beer? Considering firing in a packet of US-05 and wyeast 1272 to this beer. Thoughts?

I often chuck an extra packet of yeast into a brew if I think it's not kicking off quick enough ... :thumb:

... but my taste buds are well knackered and I don't think it's recommended. :nono: :nono:

My only other comment is the expected ABV of 9.3%! Wow! I've seen wine sold in the shops at a lower ABV than that.

I'm a "beer and a lot of it" man so at 9.3% I would probably be on my knees by the time I had sunk just half of my average quota for the day!

@Dutto, I think @ezraburke considers 8% as a session beer! :lol:

As for the 2 yeasts, I've seen some commercial recipes in books which use two different strains although I have no idea how much difference it makes.

ezraburke said:

we've managed to nail our efficiency problems (not long enough in the mash)

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Hi,

I think I've got a similar issue to what you've described. I've done 4 AG brews and on 3 out of those 4 I've missed my target OG by a factor of as much as 0.02, so I'm thinking to mash longer for next brew.

But my question is why?

Why is 60 mins not working for me?

My temp control seems fine. 2 hours is a long time to mash! A 5 - 6 hr brew day is long enough already without adding an extra hr at the start!

Could it be something else that's making my brew inefficient?

A few reasons I can think of are:

o Strike Water too cool. Did you pre-heat the Mash Tun? Was the mashed grain at the required temperature when it was mixed?

o "Clumping" of the grain. Did you stir it so that the malt was separated into individual grains?

o Low sparge temperature and/or insufficient sparging volume.

o Ineffective sparging. i.e. the sparge water "channelled" or flowed too quickly so it didn't manage to wash out all the sugars.

I'm sure there will be a dozen more reasons but I have managed to do most of the above ... :whistle:

... and some more than once!

Thanks Dutto!

I'm doing BIAB, so no mash tun.

...but most of those could do with looking at in my process, I think.

Come to think of it the one brew where I hit my target OG was when I asked the other half to assist me by stirring while I added my grains....

teadixon said:

..........

Come to think of it the one brew where I hit my target OG was when I asked the other half to assist me by stirring while I added my grains....

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Well DON"T tell her!! :nono::nono:

Your future happiness may just hinge on keeping quiet! :lol: :lol:

As an addendum to this post (and to follow up how it went) here's the debrief.

I ordered up the grain on geterbrewed but somehow managed to order two lots. Don't ask me why i didn't notice that the bill was 50 quid instead of 25 apparently I'm bad with maths.

At any rate it allowed us to pursue this brew under two conditions - we did science! And i can say that officially because i'm writing my findings down now. That's science, people.

Version 1 was a disaster. Buddy heated the strike to boiling rather than 72c (clear instructions next time, CLEAR instructions!) before i got there so we spent time waiting on it coming down to temperature. It took forever so we lobbed cold water into the mix to get it down. This resulted in a diluted wort and an efficiency of (i cringe) 47%. Terrible. Just terrible. That said we soldiered on and kept the hop additions as per. The beer is a decent ABV but quite bitter. Not crushingly but definitely hits the tongue in a way a lager doesn't. The label below:



Version 2 was a better performance all round and we tried out a combo of yeasts as before. This one we nailed efficiency and OG so looks to be the 9.3% as promised. We threw a GigaYeast Vermont IPA into the mix and a US-05 to shoulder the burden. This is currently fermenting for bottling in a few weeks time.

ezraburke said:

Version 1 was a disaster. Buddy heated the strike to boiling rather than 72c (clear instructions next time, CLEAR instructions!) before i got there so we spent time waiting on it coming down to temperature. It took forever so we lobbed cold water into the mix to get it down. This resulted in a diluted wort and an efficiency of (i cringe) 47%. Terrible. Just terrible. That said we soldiered on and kept the hop additions as per. The beer is a decent ABV but quite bitter.

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Mistakes like that are part and parcel of the process, and something good to learn from - you usually don't make the same mistake twice.

I've still got a few bottles of a 280 IBU (!!!) IPA after using the Russian River Pliny the Elder Clone recipe. I put everything into Beersmith and it did warn me about the IBUs, but chose to assume something wasn't right. Fool me once...etc.

SaigonBlaze said:

....... - you usually don't make the same mistake twice.

.........

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Yeah, right! Just remember "No-one loves a smart-ass!" :whistle: :whistle:

I can guarantee that one mistake made more than once by anyone who has been brewing for any length of time is failing to close the tap on their FV, or Boiler, or Bottling Bucket, or Mash Tun. (Or all of them given time!)

Some of us only learn by multiple mistakes ... :thumb:

... which is why I can guarantee there will NEVER be a "Mrs. Dutto Mk IV"! :whistle:

Dutto said:

Yeah, right! Just remember "No-one loves a smart-ass!" :whistle: :whistle:

I can guarantee that one mistake made more than once by anyone who has been brewing for any length of time is failing to close the tap on their FV, or Boiler, or Bottling Bucket, or Mash Tun. (Or all of them given time!)

Some of us only learn by multiple mistakes ... :thumb:

... which is why I can guarantee there will NEVER be a "Mrs. Dutto Mk IV"! :whistle:

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I'll rephrase - you never make the same mistake twice when it's an expensive one that just cost you an entire day of brewing!! :lol:

Dutto said:

Well DON"T tell her!! :nono::nono:

Your future happiness may just hinge on keeping quiet! :lol: :lol:

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Dutto that is a good policy were women are concerned,If in doubt Keep your mouth shut, and you wont regret it later , and never say might has she will take it has a firm yes:lol:

Tanzanite said:

Dutto that is a good policy were women are concerned,If in doubt Keep your mouth shut, and you wont regret it later , and never say might has she will take it has a firm yes:lol:

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The Eighth Wonder of the World is a woman's memory! :thumb:

They cannot remember to pick up that packet of yeast you asked them to get ...

... but they can remember, thirty years afterwards, what you said about her new hair-do! :thumb:

This inherent skill will be demonstrated at least twenty years AFTER the event ... :thumb:

... but it will be quoted as if you said it yesterday!

The only advice a married man will ever need is
"Don't argue with your wife!"
:thumb: :thumb: :thumb:​